Unsettling book a timely must- read
Many Canadians notoriously ignorant about First Nation history
Thomas King could hardly have planned a more auspicious timing for the publication of his most recent book. In the month following the November release of The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, the Idle No More movement was born, and Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence embarked on a hunger strike to demand action from our federal government regarding unresolved issues affecting First Nations communities.
Many Canadians are notoriously ignorant about the history that has led to the current state of unrest. ( While working on a series of interviews with Indian Residential School survivors only a decade ago, several of my friends quietly asked me, “What exactly is Residential School?”) The Inconvenient Indian conveniently lays out much of that history: the backstory that has led to the actions and protests that are today springing up across our country.
King calls his book “a narrative history of Indians in Canada.” He is the first to admit that his book is not complete, nor is it even balanced. “I say at the beginning that this is opinionated, it has a bias,” he explains to me. “For example, there is no reason to be balanced about Indian Residential School: it was a bad idea, badly carried out, and a death trap.”
But a book that is admittedly incomplete, unbalanced and opinionated does not mean that it is not founded upon a wealth of research. Much of what King attempts to do with The Inconvenient Indian is to recount the parts of history that have been left out of many history books, as well as to debunk the fallacious parts that did make it into the books. For example, the “most horrible Indian massacre” of 300 westbound pioneers in what is now the town of Almo, Idaho, in 1861 — a massacre that is now known not to have happened ( although the town still refuses to remove their plaque commemorating the “victims.”)
King explains in his introduction that “... the underlying narrative is a series of conversations and arguments that I’ve been having with myself and others for most of my adult life.” King’s personality shines through that narrative. He is ornery, opinionated, biased and angry. However, those aspects are balanced throughout by his wry sense of humour. In particular, the conversations he has on the page with his wife, the academic Helen Hoy, bring a lighter, personal note to the text; Hoy obviously was peering over his shoulder as he wrote, attempting to tone down his rants.
King’s book will anger some people. It angered me at times, with lines like “Whites want land” and “All North America dreams about is the Dead Indian.” I am White and I am North American, yet those statements don’t represent me. Is he not stereotyping Whites even as he rebels against the idea of “Indians” being stereotyped?
But, King explains to me, he is talking about societal views, not the views of any one individual. And I have to concede that he is right: that those statements do reflect how our society has, in general, treated the indigenous people of North America over the past two or more centuries.
The book will also likely anger some “Indians” as well, but for different reasons. ( As much as I do not like to use that word for North American indigenous people, it is the word that many natives, including King, choose to use collectively for themselves). Although King wrote this book with both a native and non- native audience in mind, his intention for his native readers was specific. “Native people generally know their own local history, of their reserve and their area. They have a decent idea of what has happened there. But it’s often a very myopic idea because it doesn’t connect with the larger ideas that make up policy in North America. Hopefully, by reading this, they can look at the larger historical arcs, and say ‘ Hey, yeah, that’s what happened to us, too.’”
The first half of the book deals mainly with history and image. It begins with a history of massacres, with numbers tallied for both the White and Indian sides, which concludes “that Whites were considerably more successful at massacres than Indians.” The section on image includes an unsettling discussion of what King labels as “Live Indians,” the real indigenous people of today, be they legally recognized (“status”) or not, be they on reserve or in the city; and “Dead Indians,” his term for the image of what an Indian should look like, decked out in buckskin and feather headdress, or at very least wearing a headband or beaded necklace.
King tells me that “the first part of the book is gentler than the second half.” However, I found the opposite to be true. The first half of the book feels more as if it is written in anger ( never, I might add, unjustifiably so, given the nature of some of the atrocities in native history). “I’ve gotten to an age where I’m not as gentle as I might once have been,” he explains. However, the second half of the book is a more balanced and considered look at the problems and issues of the present, including a very thoughtful analysis of some of the solutions that have so far been attempted.
The research that forms the foundation of The Inconvenient Indian is copious. Although not a complete history within itself, the book completes, or at least complements, the bulk of Indian histories ( or, perhaps more accurately, histories that include Indians) that have previously been published.
The Inconvenient Indian may well be unsettling for many nonnatives in this country to read. This is exactly why we all should read it. Especially now.